Upon the 2016 introduction of QuickSight, Amazon Web Services’ business intelligence offering, the company’s intention was to deliver product and customer data insights to business professionals, extending beyond just developers.

However, the natural language processing capabilities at that time were not sufficiently advanced to empower users to effectively query databases utilizing everyday language.

With the subsequent development of these technologies, Amazon is now releasing a substantial enhancement known as QuickSight Q, enabling users to obtain necessary information simply by posing a straightforward question, as highlighted during Andy Jassy’s presentation at AWS re:Invent.

Jassy explained that the service will leverage natural language to identify and present what it determines to be the most important insights. He expressed dissatisfaction with the requirement for users to understand database locations or data storage, stating his desire for them to be able to enter a query in plain language and receive a direct response.

QuickSight Q is designed to achieve this goal, directly competing with several business intelligence companies and demonstrating the transformative impact of machine learning and natural language processing on business operations across various sectors.

According to Amazon, QuickSight Q functions by allowing users to input a question in natural language – for example, “What were the sales for product X over the last 12 months?” – and receiving an answer within seconds, without needing knowledge of tables or data repositories.

This represents a significant application of AWS’s strategy to incorporate machine learning into services that require minimal coding expertise. Jassy emphasized that customers are seeking solutions to their questions, not simply machine learning technology itself.